Is there a work that is critically aclaimed and considered a masterpiece, but you either dislike it, see it as overrated, or downright hate it with passion?

Yes. “The Way We Were.” (yawn)

Mobs Dick. Long, boring, way too heavy handed with the metaphors (even for its time) and not that that well written.

The movie “Grease.” Maybe the film isn’t critically acclaimed or a classic, but so many people seem to love it and watch it repeatedly. The film shows up on TV fairly often, and I’ve never been able to get through more than about 5 minutes.

Coffee. Someone could agree that coffee isn’t really a “work,” but there’s certainly an art to making a good cup. I’ve always loathed everything about coffee – taste and smell – regardless of the quality.

(Great question, and you’ll likely get some intriguing answers.)

The paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. However technically gifted da Vinci may have been his works are, to my eyes, dull and lifeless.

Ugh!
Forest Gump is a rip off of a Woody Allen movie called Zelig.
In 2 years, no one is gonna say “Hey, let’s watch Spotlight”.
Good fellas is okay, but not great.
A Beautiful Mind, intersteller, Gravity, the Revenant, all recent films severely overrated.

The song that starts with “I am the god of hellfire”.
It is like a wet fart.

@filmfann “Forest Gump is a rip off of a Woody Allen movie called Zelig.”

Aside from splicing specifically shot footage in with archival footage I don’t see any real similarities between the two films.

@kritiper Coincidentally, I was yawning when I read that answer hehe
@Darth_Algar I never understood what’s so awesome about Mona Lisa
@Love_my_doggie It was inspired by this.

“Mama Mia” “Love Story” actually no one in their right mind would label either of these “masterpieces”

I third what @Sneki95 said and what @Darth_Algar inferred about the Mona Lisa: a portrait of apathetically amused blandness.

I was going to post my answer earlier, but I got sidetracked by my curiosity about the animosity between Lenny duh Vinski* and Micheloonjello*.

*I know I misspelled their names, but this is one way I have of apathetically amusing myself. ;-p

I don’t see much here (above) that’s been rated a masterpiece, honestly.

My list would be fairly long, I’m afraid. It would include

• the works of James Joyce
• the painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, by Picasso; I understand its importance, I just don’t like to look at it
• an opera called La voix humaine, by Poulenc, which I simply hate, hate, hate
• a Vivaldi flute concerto that makes me jump up and shut it off as soon as the first two notes sound
• several works of Berlioz
• The House of the Seven Gables, by Hawthorne; I’m no stranger to the period, the style, or the author, but I couldn’t get through it

There are a lot of movies that I wouldn’t care to see, or don’t want to see again, but none springs to mind that I would say I can’t stand. (I did think Love Story was very stupid, but I also don’t remember seeing it critically acclaimed. It was just popular, and popular doesn’t mean good.) There are, however, certain actors whom I don’t want to watch at all, don’t want to see in anything; Nicole Kidman, for one, When I get stuck with one and determine to sit it out, it requires all my good behavior just to cringe quietly.

@Sneki95 @Brian1946

Edvard Munch, on the other hand – there’s a guy who, while not as perfect as someone like da Vinci, could really capture human experience through paint.

My Left Foot 1989.
I wanted to like this movie, but it was just painful to watch.

@LuckyGuy I could only get through 10 minutes of that movie.

@Jeruba

“I don’t see much here (above) that’s been rated a masterpiece, honestly.”

Would that include the long and boring Mob’s Dick? ;-)

No, @Brian1946, that one certainly has been so rated.

I was an English major in college. In three separate classes at two different schools I was assigned the dread Moby-Dick. Having glanced it over, I couldn’t stand to read it, so I paid good attention in class, ducked class discussions, and took lots of notes (this was long, long before the Internet). I managed to get A’s on my papers and exams.

(Acing exams on things I hadn’t read or studied was a minor subspecialty of mine in school; and no, I never cheated. I just learned how to do it, and it wasn’t hard.)

Years later, as a young working woman with school behind me, I finally took the thing off my shelf and read it. And—“This is pretty good,” I said. “Too bad I never read it when I was supposed to.”

On the other hand, Mob’s Dick, about a guy who works as a detective for the Mafia, is too long and boring for anybody to read.

Seinfeld.

@Jeruba “Acing exams on things I hadn’t read or studied…”

I, too, was a whiz at that. I just showed up for every class, took good notes, and spewed-back whatever the professor had said. I really don’t recommend this approach, although I do think I managed to learn some things along the way.

If I didn’t care about the grade and didn’t study I knew I would still get a C, at least. If I wanted to ace it I studied briefly.

Well, damn, that’s a typo what am a typo! I hadn’t seen that, @Brian1946, but I do appreciate your addition of the apostrophe! :-) See, just more proof that if someone is boring, size doesn’t compensate!
@Jeruba, better you than me! Loving a good sea story I read it through…rolling my eyes and groaning the entire time.

Most modern art.

5000 Likes @syz.

I’m not much of a Picasso fan. I thought I was, and then a few years ago I went to an exhibit of his work at a nearby museum. I was excited walking in. But there were just so many deconstructed women’s bodies, and most of them—for all of the otherwise irregularity—had perfect circles or spheres for breasts, usually somewhere prominent on the page or in the sculpture. In my very insubstantial, young, and not-art-wise perspective, I began to feel like it was an exhibit of objectification. I know he has more variety in his work as a whole… if I recall correctly, it was that these were from a certain period of his, or from certain related periods? Not sure anymore. This is what I am talking about, etc. I haven’t been able to think about the guy in the same way since.

I don’t read Cormac McCarthy. I got through his The Road, and while the prose itself was effective (vivid and rhythmic, if I recall correctly)—I got physically ill reading it. The story itself was just too awful—too much.

I agree, @Jeruba, As I read through this thread, I think your definition of masterpiece (mine as well, BTW) differs from many here.

@syz

I love Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup series. Not because they’re great works of art in and of themselves, but for what they express. They’re an appreciation of the mundane, the little things that we often consider trivial or take for granted, but which are, nonetheless, part of our day-to-day lives. For his case, Warhol chose Campbell’s soup cans because Campbell’s was, from childhood, a staple of his diet.

This thread brings up a point so frequently understated in discussions around education, and that is about the percentage of one’s grades that can be accredited to a facility for taking tests. It’s another one of those little quirks serving to demonstrate just how unfair life actually is.

@stanleybmanly, interesting side question. In my case I was speaking of essay exams, though, not multiple choice.

Even more unfair. If you dance like a goddess with the language, what chance has the competition?

Everything ever written by Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters.

Gag me with a silver tea spoon.

Acclaimed masterpieces I dislike is pretty easy, as it’s easy to dislike many things, usually because they were assigned in school along with too many other things, took a lot of time, and didn’t click Almost all nostalgic fiction about life in The South of the USA bores me and/or repulses me (e.g. Dandelion Wine, Oklahoma). But those say more about my readiness/ability to appreciate them in those circumstances. There are also many films that won awards but that I can’t even be bothered to start or finish watching (Titanic, Forrest Gump, Yeltsin, Grease).

My current hate, though I don’t know that anyone of note thinks it’s actually good, is The Force Awakens – I can go on forever about how I think 85% of that is lazy, apathetic, illogical, disappointing nonsense.

Beethoven’s original version of Ice Ice Baby just didn’t do it for me.
Also, the Mona Lisa…err, hair straighteners much babe?

Oh, and let us not forget “Boyhood”. What a piece of shit.

Not to nitpick, but Dandelion Wine is about the south? I’m pretty sure it’s one of Bradbury’s stories set in Waukegan, I mean “Green Town”, Illinois.

What if I said, “To Kill a Mockingbird”?

Sadly a lot! I don’t want to be a fool who can’t appreciate art, but some works really need more justification for their place.

Alice in Wonderland is the classic example. It’s the best children’s book ever written, and a timeless classic. But what actually makes it great? The whole story is a mess, just a girl wandering in her dream world filled with random characters with no personality at all. The only thing the book is useful is that it provides some stock characters for parodies, and I have to admit I like the parodies much more than the original work.

Another horrible classic is Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It is said to be the greatest Chinese novel of all time, the one that pioneered Chinese novels. But I can’t find anything to even like it. The critics say it is great because it’s huge, but that is exactly what ruins it for me. The book is so huge and so full of events that nothing is memorable. Even a summary can be a rightful novel. But actually the real summary of the whole thing is this: a bunch of greedy men go on a war rampant to claim lands for themselves. What offends me the most is that it depicts some of the men as popular heroes, the God sent saviors. When did invading other countries become a virture?

Sherlock Holmes, a less terrible one, but still doesn’t deserve its place among the classic. Holmes is too intelligent for its own good. He has the answer for almost every mystery that the stories become boring after a while. Not to mention many of the mysteries involve strange plants and animals, which are just mind-blowing instead of entertaining as it set out to be. Sherlock Holmes stories are charming on the whole, but a classic? Just… too… much… credit.

@Mimishu1995 “When did invading other countries become a virture?”

Since the dawn of human civilization pretty much. Conquerors are always seen as heroes to their people (and as villains to the conquered).

Anything written by Larry McMurtry of Kurt Vonnegut.

@Darth_Algar Oh wow, yes, you’re right. My strong aversion and inability to stomach it also prevented me from digesting or retaining much, and when a similar thing happened with a Southern writer’s work a few years later, that may have been where I got the setting for Dandelion Wine mixed up.

After reading the thread, i feel like i need to defend Alice, captain Ahab or Sherlock Holmes… but that’s not the purpose.

In books: I hate all Balzac except one, all Zola and Dos Passos. Mark Twain… Jane Austeen I sort of get but the English petty noble milieu bores me to death.

In paintings: Mona Lisa. Can’t see what’s so special about her. Fernand Léger, Pollock, anything cubist.

I’ll admit to this:

One of my favourite home-alone-and-the-boys-are-out pasttimes is to drink wine and watch various costume dramas based on the Jane Austen books.

Then I yell horrible things at the characters. “You gold digging cow, don’t you realise he’s a complete asshole? You idiots deserve each other!”

But surely you can’t fault the cows who, after all, had few options beyond “digging for gold”.

Film IMDB members continuously rate “Shawshank Redemption” as the #1 movie. It’s a well done movie based on an an interesting story. That’s it.

Art I’m in the “Mona Lisa” group. Having seen it twice in person, I just don’t get it. The “David” sculpture by Michelangelo is the most breathtaking work of art seen so far.

Literature Isn’t The Holy Bible rated #1? To be fair, I haven’t read the entire book. With that said, there are so many facts to back up the invalidity due to mistranslations, misinterpretations, and shifts in culture that it seems to be foolish for anyone to believe in what is offered in the current versions.

@stanleybmanly – I usually feel bad for the girls’ fathers, who are generally old men who just wanted someone other than a gaggle of vapid, cackling young women to talk to.

@Pied_Pfeffer – You know, I actually prefer Donatello’s David over Michaelangelo’s.

It might be the pretty floral bonnet.

@Seek LOL. Or perhaps it is the hermaphroditic appearance. Seriously, if you ever have the chance to visit Florence, it is worth it, if you haven’t already been there.

@Mimishu1995 I adore Alice, my favourite LSD trip story hehe :D
I agree about long works being boring. It is a reason why I dislike War and Peace. Too long, too many characters and plots, you get lost easily. I never liked anything that is too long, it slowly drains you and after a while you just want it to end already. I don’t mind reading long works, but it takes a lot to keep the reader interested after 1000 pages, imo. As for the conquering lands, I totally get you. Some may say it was a different time and historical context and whatnot. I call it propaganda.
Also, I like Poirot more than Holmes. He is more charismatic. Holmes never got me interested.

@Zaku I hate Titanic as well.

@Pied_Pfeffer The Bible is #1 most printed and sold book, not the most critically acclaimed one. It’s not even that much popular, especially nowadays. You may as well say it’s a book everyone knows about, but most have never read.

@Sneki95 Ah, thank you for the correction regarding the status of the Bible. We can thank the Gideons for their contribution to the book being printed and placed in just about every hotel nightstand in the U.S.~

@ragingloli is correct. Boyhood is crap. Not even good crap.